In such a workpiece receiving device known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,312,283 one of the receiving elements is stationarily arranged while the other receiving element is linearly adjustable for the adaptation to different shirt collar sizes. Each of the receiving elements consists of a supporting plate and an associated clamp plate. In particular at very acute-angled collar shirts or comparable workpieces the clamping plates must be very carefully machined and profiled at the tip area so as to achieve a uniform clamp action over the total marginal area of the workpiece. Even at keeping these requirements it cannot be prevented that the collar tip will be distorted after the generation of a seam due to a distorsion of the workpiece due to the seam generation.
From U.S. Pat. No. 3,172,379 a workpiece receiving device is known wherein two plates arranged on one another receive clampingly the workpiece and are profiled with congruent slots, in which the seam extends. Thus, the workpiece is clampingly kept on both sides of the same to be generated. Due to the lability of the plates the workpiece can only be weakly clamped in the marginal area outside of the seam to be produced. As the receiving elements are necessarily of large areas, it is difficult to provide a loading device for the automatic loading and removal.